A recent survey reports that a student’s average costs of textbooks for a year at a public four-year university is nearly $1,300. Equally worrisome is another study’s finding that two-thirds of students will skip using a textbook because of the cost. By offering and spotlighting affordable course materials, academic libraries can prove their value while helping to create a more equitable learning experience for students. In this book, the Association for Library Collections & Technical Services (ALCTS) has gathered its members’ expertise to describe affordable text initiatives that promise to improve student learning and student retention. Topics covered include surprising findings on the most expensive courses for textbook requirements; a case study showing how LSU abandoned DDA, established requirements for e-books collections, and boosted usage to 17,000 unique titles accessed; ways to build on existing procedures and relationships of print reserves to develop e-book collections for courses; how to work productively with campus bookstores; analysis of library programs that offered grants to faculty for developing course texts at UCLA, North Carolina State University, and the University of Southern Mississippi; creating a textbook database so faculty can discover potential textbooks the library already has or could purchase in e-book format; measuring textbook usage through COUNTER reports or course reserve systems; and ideas for partnering with campus instructional technology and distance ed units. This valuable book demonstrates how librarians can use their collection, licensing, and faculty outreach know-how to help students and their instructors address skyrocketing textbook prices.

Redefine your software development experience by understanding the extensive features and rich functionalities offered by Visual Studio Code Key Features Leverage the power of the free, cross-platform, and highly customizable code editor to build modern web and cloud applications Edit, debug and deploy on Microsoft Azure with Visual Studio Code Learn how to customize features and install a wide variety of third-party extensions Book DescriptionMicrosoft Visual Studio Code is a powerful, lightweight code editor for modern web and cloud development. It is a source code editor that can be used with a variety of programming languages, which works on multiple platforms such as Linux, Windows, and macOS. This book provides extensive coverage of the tools, functionalities, and extensions available within the VS Code environment that will help you build multi-platform apps with ease. You'll start with the installation of VS Code and learn about various tools and features that are essential for development. Progressing through the chapters, you'll explore the user interface while understanding tips and tricks for increasing productivity. Next, you'll delve into VS Code extensions and discover how they can make life easier for developers. Later, the book shows you how to develop a sample application with different programming languages, tools, and runtimes to display how VS code can be used effectively for development, before helping you get to grips with source code version management and deployment on Azure with VS Code. Finally, you'll build on your skills by focusing on remote development with VS Code. By the end of this book, you'll have the knowledge you need to use Visual Studio Code as your primary tool for software development. What you will learn Explore various editing, formatting, and navigational features of VS Code Understand how to add, delete, and configure extensions in VS Code Develop web APIs using Node.js, Java, and Python in VS Code Develop background service in .NET Core and explore Dapr Delve into debugging techniques such as breakpoints, log points, and data inspection Use Git with Azure DevOps to share and synchronize code with VS Code Create custom extensions in VS Code to increase developer productivity Understand the concepts of remote development using VS Code Who this book is forThis book is for software developers, web developers and polyglot programmers, who are working with any language or framework such as Python, Java, Node.js, or .NET and are looking to learn how they can create multi-platform, microservices based, cloud-native applications while effectively using Visual Studio Code for editing, debugging, version management and deployment. Basic software development skills are a must to grasp the concepts covered in this book.

Shortly after the syllabi are posted, and long before the beginning of the term, interlibrary loan departments at academic libraries will have filled or rejected innumerable textbook requests. While it would be unwise if not impossible to buy and circulate every textbook at a college or university, there are many academic libraries who are selectively adding textbooks to their collections. And the practice seems to be gaining momentum. In this volume, the Association for Library Collections and Technical Services (ALCTS) and editor Chris Diaz gather case studies that pull together creative approaches and best practices for print textbook reserve programs. This book discusses such topics as results and analysis from a detailed survey of a state university's core-course textbook reserve program; funding sources for starting or piloting a program; using aggregated enrollment, grade, and textbook cost data to identify "high impact" courses; identifying course-related books that are in the library's collection or fit an existing collection policy; workflow for using bookstore data with ILS and purchasing systems; and using LibGuides and Google Sheets to publicize textbook holdings, and how a back-end database supports discovery for students and reporting for reserves staff. A textbook reserve program can be one way of helping students who are struggling with the high cost of textbooks, and this book spotlights a variety of examples that can be used as models.